Indeed, you have explained quite well what a major problem is with this new "celebrating diversity" mindset we're all suppose to subscribe to.
With diversity come a bunch of different cultural attitudes and values. It becomes difficult when you're celebrating diversity to then turn around and impose one sub-culture's values on another sub-culture. Even when it seems obvious that this would be a good thing, as you have articulated.
Anyway, I think you're strayiong off the thread here. Even if what different sub-cultures value is different, which it is, it's still a LONG shot to assume that you can force kids into doing what they don't want, and excell at it. In a global market, you are competing against the very best.

I agree 100%. In fact most of what people are saying here would speak against any more 'open boarders' for would be cheap to hire foreign engineers.
How about we go global to find the lowest paid politicians?

its strikes me as a patent war escalates, all we are seeing is a war for gifted individuals. US has made war all to easy, asset stripped companies for patents and left Uk with very little. And now US giants dodge tax on the high street. Im sorry, but I can only confirm that the brain drain has happened. Korea and China will win this one. Apple and all others are only fighting a patent battle now and trying to plug the drain by waiving a "come and live here" flag to the future innovators, that success and the attraction is already happening in Asia. With our history of external investors coming and going, many of us are now sure our country is firmly a "consumption" only market. Consumption requires innovative products cheaply and of high volume. Thats Asia. If a whant a good lawyer, he would probably be American, thats the sad part.

BTW - there is just such a clause in the H1-B system but do you think that money gets into worker training. Some one should follow the money. I did a lot of analysis on who hires H1-Bs years ago and it was strange how for example Microsoft and Oracle could not find IT engineers in the Valley but HP had no trouble. Its publicly available at the Dept of Labor site - see who and how many H1-Bs are hired for youself.

Please do not change history just for your convenience (unless you are British). British did not do any free service to uplift the developing countries you quoted. They brought more destruction than any development.

One reason that so many of the college recruiters find so many foreign students is that Universities like to have them because they pay such high tuition fees. With state funding for colleges under fire, the administrators target students that bring in high revenue.

I think fundamentals hit the nail on the head here. The only thing he got wrong is the compensation of "top-notch" engineers, there's a large contingent of employers who think the "premium" that should be paid for top engineering talent is EXACTLY zero - "you older guys ought to consider yourselves lucky you get hired at all" and they act as if they weren't doing overt age discrimination (I used to work a lot of contract assignments so I ought to know, the top rates out there now are LOWER than the minimum I used to accept for the same work). And they're getting away stashing the difference of a couple trillion in offshore bank accounts where US laws for the most part can't touch them. I've stated elsewhere on related blogs that the absolute WORST thing we could do at this point is encourage our kids to enter robotics competitions to get them interested in "STEM" fields and provide more fodder for the beast. Until we get our DOMESTIC technical supply-demand equations back in balance we ought to do absolutely NOTHING to encourage more technical immigration. Unfortunately in this country with a "Citizens United" Supreme Court our pleas for reason will once again be drowned out by lobbying bucks, money that many of us actually helped these thankless crooks earn "back in the day" when the system was a couple orders of magnitude closer to balance. How to we get back to that condition, THAT is the real question that is crying out for answers!

There are a lot of great engineers in the states. For every engineering job opening, there are 5000-7000 applicants. Do you beleive that none of 5000 people are really qualified? It's companies way of getting cheaper labor and lowering benefits for employees, that drives requests for more engineers and scientists from other countries.

This will just get worse!
We try to compensate our own faulty education system with attracting people from abroad.
If this short-term goal is rewarded then why should there be any effort to improve our own education system?
I think there needs to be a clause that for every H1-B or L-Visa should be a fund put aside supporting education of similar discipline for people who can’t afford the $10K/$20K+ grant per year.

Having done a few college recruiting trips I can say that 99% of the grad students I meet are not US citizens. Do we send them home to get paid lower or do we hire them here in the USA where they will be paid comparable wages?